2001 E. Guigal Côte-Rôtie La Turque - France, Rhône, Northern Rhône, Côte-Rôtie (9/16/2022)
Pulled the cork and got an immediate hit of bacon. Ah Côte Rôtie! Once in the glass it wasn’t so much bacon, but plenty of roasted meat, smoke, deep cherry & plum fruit. The palate was even more impressive, as it carried the flavors along a layer of bright acidity that made the wine fresh and amazingly food friendly. Tannins kicked in on the finish, but we’re not at all obtrusive. Finishing the wine about four hours after it was opened it remained rock steady. Fabulous showing, and tons of time to go. No regrets opening this bottle. None at all.
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Thanks.
Funny to read praise on a Guigal-La-La here … 
… but certainly justified.
(Didn´t I read here some time ago that he doesn´t make any good wines? 
)
I tasted this wine only in (app.) 2005 … it was and is not my favorite Cote-Rotie-vintage but it was certainly promising then … and seems to come together now with time.
I only have the Chateau d´Ampuis 01 in the cellar … might put it into a CR-tasting later.
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Shared this bottle with a close friend at dinner. It was a stunning match for their duck entrée. Worked well with my lamb dish, but not the lights out match it was with the duck.
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The 05 Ampuis was excellent. Had it 3 times and all 94s for me.
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Chateau d’Ampuis is usually fine and a good introduction to the style of the Lalas reg. vintage … at a more affordable price.
However D’Ampuis consists of the 6 (later 7) vineyards that provided the base of the regular CR-cuvee until 1994.
Since then the regular CR is mostly from purchased grapes … and more and more producers bottle their own wines now.
Consequently the quality has dropped … no real interesting reg. CR after 1999 …
For my part, I like them - but I worry about whether or not the more recent vintages are going to age like the wonderful examples I have had from the 70s and 80s.
Right before the pandemic, I had all of the 99s in a one week period and while they were big and primary and stunning- they seemed still a bit too primary to me after 20 years. There was little or no secondary development.
This is a problem with a lot of the big “modern” Cabs and Bordeaux made today. They stay big and pretty and only very slowly start to fade- but they never fully develop like they should.
I am not sure where the past 20 years or so of Lalas fit into that picture.
This one did not feel “modern” in terms of overripe and/or over-oaked.
I served a bottle of the '18 Brune & Blonde last week. It was a delicious, luscious wine – lots of fruit, quite approachable. Served blind, everyone liked it, but only one of three other people guessed it was a Rhone. Only a hint of oak, but also no hint of CR character. All flesh and silk.
Too bad. That wine was so good in decades past.
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How fortunate for me to read this note. I happen to own one bottle of this wine and have no idea when to open it. Many of the CT notes seem to say it’s too soon, but who knows.
David, if you had one bottle of this, when would you open it, based on this experience?
If I had one more I would wait for its 25th birthday.
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Wow, I had this recently and felt very similarly to you.
Actually I got CR character in the nose (tobacco, leather, bacon) but not at all on the palate. As you note, very silky and plush, and I thought the oak more moderate. Very good wine, but not what I was expecting based on bottles I had decade+ ago.
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Thank you- good to know. I rarely drink Rhone, so I can often misjudge them when alongside Bordeaux or Burgundy. Maybe 1999 was really that big a vintage in the Rhone that 25+ years is needed for the wines to turn the corner. I will keep eyes out for an 01 to try. I am running low on Cote Rotie and just have some Levet at this point (and far too young.)
We had a 1982 Brune and Blonde and a La Mouline a few weeks ago at our wine group’s dinner . The B&B was quite funky but the La Mouline was superb. I’m not normally a Rhone fan but this showed so well and was easily the WOTN against some older Charmes Chambertins, Haut Brion and Cos d’Estournel.